MWC 2012: Asus Padfone is batsh*t crazy phone/tablet hybrid

Jack of all trades or Frankenstein’s mobile monster? We’ll let you pass judgement on the Padfone, Asus’s crazy smartphone/tablet hybrid just revealed at Mobile World Congress 2012.

A little like the Motorola Atrix, it’s a smartphone that docks inside and powers a tablet device. That, while not a new concept, is still a fairly crazy one in our books, but things get crazier.

It doesnt just dock with the 10.1 inch tablet/screen accessory; it slips inside it, like a mini mobile parasite. The smartphone then has its interface intelligently scaled up to the larger device, boosting battery life from the tablet’s larger reserves. You then also have the option to clip on a full size keyboard, making it a kind or laptop replacement too.

If that wasn’t enough transforming action for you, the device also comes with a capacitive stylus for jotting down notes. As you’ve probably guessed, there’s a twist here too; the stylus doubles up as a sort of headset, with a mic and speaker for taking calls with when the phone is tucked away inside the tablet.

Like we said in the headline, batsh*t crazy.

Looking at the handsets more conservative specs, you’ll find a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD screen, displaying Ice Cream Sandwich off of Snapdragon’s new dual-core S4 chip. There’s also an Adreno 225 GPU, an 8MP camera and 16GB storage which, when paired with microSD cards and the tablet, jumps to a potential 64GB.

It’s mad, but we can’t pretend we don’t kind of love it. Heading out to stores in April, we’ll try to get our hands on one for a full review soon.